If you happen to live in Perth like me, you’ve probably heard about the exhibition, ‘Picasso to Warhol: Fourteen Modern Masters’, which is coming in June from The Museum of Modern Art. There have been quite a few excellent collections and exhibitions to visit The Art Gallery of Western Australia over the years, but I think this one tops them all. I have butterflies in my stomach just thinking about going to this exhibition. I can’t imagine anyone here in Perth not wanting to make the most of this rare opportunity to see some of the best art in the world.

Since I’m keen to encourage everyone to go see it, The Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) has kindly provided some information about this exhibition to share on my blog. Note, I was not paid for this (I never accept payment for posts), I don’t need money to shamelessly fawn over art! ‘Picasso to Warhol’ will be the beginning of six exhibitions to be housed by The Art Gallery of Western Australia over the next three years, in a partnership series with New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Perth will be the only place in Australia to showcase these exhibitions and collections from MoMA. I think this is a very sound reason for those of you interstate to come visit us here in Perth (I can also tempt you with wine and great beaches). I’ve been invited to the media launch for the ‘Picasso to Warhol’ exhibition, so hopefully I can snap some pictures at the launch to share with you all here.

What I personally like about the way The Art Gallery of Western Australia has organised this series of exhibitions is its incorporation of other cultural events. Rather than presenting art as a rarefied and distanced experience, AGWA is incorporating it as part of a wider and interconnected cultural experience, alongside live music, food, shopping and a Manhattan-inspired bar here in Perth. I also plan to take their ‘Literary Links Tour’, which explores the relationship between literature and visual art.

I’ll probably be blogging about this series of exhibitions as I attend them (and basically be swooning with pleasure in each post), but I’ll introduce you to the first two in the series now:

:: 16 June – 3 December 2012 ::

Picasso to Warhol: Fourteen Modern Masters
The first exhibition in the series to go on display, it features over 100 masterpieces rarely seen outside the United States, including the works of modern artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi, Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp, Giorgio de Chirico, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Jackson Pollock, Louise Bourgeois, Romare Bearden, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol. I’ve seen some of their works when I visited New York a few years ago, but I can’t wait to get reacquainted with them.

:: 28 January – 12 May 2013 ::Picturing New York: Photographs from the Museum of Modern Art
I’m brimming with excitement about this exhibition, perhaps even more than the ‘Picasso to Warhol’ one as I have a more intimate relationship with photographs. This exhibition is described as ‘Depicting the iconic New York and the idiosyncratic details that define New Yorkers’ sense of home’. This sounds so fascinating to me, this idea of ‘home’ in the vast city – especially a city that is so well-known and considered to be a type of ‘prototype’ for the city-landscape. This exhibition includes works by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Lewis Hine, Helen Levitt, Cindy Sherman, Alfred Stieglitz and Weegee. Basically, it’s a collection of some of the best twentieth-century urban photography.

All the ticketing, exhibitions and events details are available here, and The Art Gallery of Western Australia has also created a blog which I hope will be updated with some interesting information about all the exhibitions as they come to Perth. I’m so excited about this, and as silly as it sounds, I’m also proud that these collections are coming here.